“Um.” White Haven turned that over in his mind. He was inclined to agree with her, but he looked at his chief of staff. “Alyson?”

“I agree with Jenny,” Captain (Junior Grade) Lady Alyson Granston-Henley said firmly. “All our sources confirm that McQueen has been sweeping with a new broom ever since she took over their war office, and she has to know Theisman is one of her best fleet commanders. Whatever Kline might have done, there’s no way McQueen will stick him out at the end of a limb and saw it off behind him. She has to have made a major push to put his forts on-line. If she hadn’t, she certainly would have sent him more mobile units—and heavier ones—to make up the difference. Either that, or reduced his strength still further to make it hurt less when we punch the system out.”

White Haven nodded slowly and glanced around the table, seeing agreement on most of his other officers’ faces. Commander Yerensky, his RMN astrogator, seemed a little doubtful, and Commander Yanakov, his Grayson logistics officer, appeared to share Yerensky’s reservations.

“What’s your feeling, Trev?” he asked his operations officer, Commander Trevor Haggerston of the Erewhon Navy. The heavyset commander scratched an eyebrow for a moment, then shrugged and grinned crookedly.

“I think Jenny and Captain G are both right,” he said. “God knows we’ve taken long enough to assemble Eighth Fleet, and McQueen can’t be certain we’re not planning on diverting additional units to it from Third Fleet before we move on Barnett. And while Theisman has fifty-four capital ships to our forty-nine, twenty-eight of his are only battleships. We’ve got a fifteen-percent tonnage edge in capital ships—exclusive of battlecruisers—and a forty-seven-percent edge in genuine ships of the wall. We could just about double those numbers with diversions from Third Fleet, and he and McQueen must know it. Under the circumstances, someone as cagey as McQueen would have been pulling ships out of Barnett before we killed them—or at least replacing SDs and dreadnoughts with battleships she could better afford to lose—unless she figured his fixed defenses were good enough to even the odds.”

“With all due respect, Admiral, that assumes McQueen is in a position to act on her judgment,” Commander Yanakov put in. The sandy-haired Grayson officer was thirty-one, young enough that he’d received the first-generation prolong treatments shortly after Grayson joined the Alliance. He was a third cousin of Admiral Yanakov’s, and he also had remarkably handsome features and intriguing, gold-flecked brown eyes which had cut a devastating swath through the female Allied officers who’d crossed his path.

“I think we have to assume she is, Commander,” O’Brien said quietly. She, at least, seemed impervious to his looks and undeniable charm, although, to do the Grayson officer credit, he himself seemed unaware of his attractiveness.

“I realize all the analyses point that way,” Yanakov said calmly, “and they may very well be accurate. In fact, I think they are. But we have to remain open to the possibility that they aren’t. Giving her the authority to call the shots without civilian interference represents a major departure from the Peeps’ established policies. I believe we ought to allow for the chance that they haven’t changed directions as completely as we believe. At the very least, we have to be cautious about making operational assumptions based on an unquestioning belief that they have.”